CDS (II) 2020 General Knowledge · Question 70 of 120

Correct — A, Ayodhya. Of the four towns listed, three are fixed points on every map of 1857. Delhi was the centre of the whole revolt from 11 May, when the Meerut sepoys arrived and proclaimed Bahadur Shah Zafar emperor, until the city was retaken in September. Kanpur saw Nana Saheb's rising, the siege of Wheeler's entrenchment and the massacres of June and July. Agra, the seat of the Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces, was attacked too: the province rose, the British were beaten in an action outside the city on 5 July 1857, and some six thousand European non-combatants were shut up in Agra Fort until relief came. Ayodhya is the one name that does not appear in the standard roll of centres — the textbook list runs Delhi, Meerut, Kanpur, Lucknow, Jhansi, Bareilly, Arrah and Faizabad.

• (b)Agra — Agra was affected. The North-Western Provinces rose, the British force was defeated outside the city in July 1857, and the whole European population took refuge in Agra Fort for months.
• (c)Delhi — Delhi is the central theatre of the revolt. The rebels who reached it from Meerut on 11 May proclaimed the Mughal emperor as their sovereign, and the recapture of the city in September broke the back of the rising.
• (d)Kanpur — Kanpur is among the most fiercely contested centres, associated with Nana Saheb and Tantia Tope, and the town was retaken by the British in mid-July 1857.

The revolt began at Meerut on 10 May 1857 after the earlier protest at Barrackpore in March, and spread across the Ganga plain and central India. Its main centres and leaders are the examinable core: Delhi under Bahadur Shah Zafar and General Bakht Khan, Kanpur under Nana Saheb and Tantia Tope, Lucknow under Begum Hazrat Mahal, Jhansi under Rani Lakshmibai, Bareilly under Khan Bahadur Khan, Arrah and Jagdishpur under Kunwar Singh, and Faizabad under Maulvi Ahmadullah Shah. Large parts of the country — the south, most of Bengal, Punjab, Rajputana and the princely states of the west — stayed quiet.

This is a list-recall item and it rewards holding the standard set of centres rather than reasoning about geography. One honest caveat belongs on the record, because a well-read candidate will feel it. Awadh as a whole was in revolt, and Faizabad, the district town beside Ayodhya, was a genuine centre under Maulvi Ahmadullah Shah. So the answer does not mean that the country around Ayodhya was untouched; it means that Ayodhya itself is not one of the towns the textbooks name as a centre, while Delhi, Kanpur and Agra all are. Where the examiner asks which place was 'not a centre', the safest test is whether the town has a named leader and a named episode attached to it.

• Outbreak dates: Barrackpore 29 March 1857 (Mangal Pandey), Meerut 10 May, Delhi 11 May, Lucknow 4 June, Jhansi early June.
• The standard list of centres is Delhi, Meerut, Kanpur, Lucknow, Jhansi, Bareilly, Arrah and Faizabad.
• Agra was the capital of the North-Western Provinces; after a defeat outside the city on 5 July 1857 about six thousand European non-combatants sheltered in Agra Fort.
• Maulvi Ahmadullah Shah of Faizabad was the leader in the Awadh countryside adjoining Ayodhya.
• Canning was Governor-General during the revolt, and the Government of India Act 1858 transferred power from the Company to the Crown.

• Assuming that because Awadh rose, every town in Awadh is a named centre. Faizabad is on the list; Ayodhya is not.
• Overlooking Agra because the fighting there is less famous than at Delhi or Kanpur.
• Mixing up Meerut, where the revolt began on 10 May, with Delhi, which the rebels reached the next day.

As an odd-one-out on the list of centres, or as a place-to-leader match.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following pairs relating to the Revolt of 1857 is correctly matched?

  • (a)Lucknow — Kunwar Singh
  • (b)Kanpur — Nana Saheb
  • (c)Jhansi — Khan Bahadur Khan
  • (d)Bareilly — Begum Hazrat Mahal

  Answer(b) Kanpur — Nana Saheb. Kunwar Singh led at Arrah and Jagdishpur, Khan Bahadur Khan at Bareilly, and Begum Hazrat Mahal at Lucknow.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Revolt of 1857 broke out at Meerut on which date?

  • (a)29 March 1857
  • (b)10 May 1857
  • (c)11 May 1857
  • (d)4 June 1857

  Answer(b) 10 May 1857 — the rebels reached Delhi on 11 May; 29 March was Mangal Pandey's protest at Barrackpore.